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Friday, May 22, 2009

This week has been dominated by Obama's attempt to take it easy on Islamic terrorists, clashing with the desire of Congressional Democrats to avoid being implicated as soft on terrorism. The Gitmo defeat was all the more shocking, because as far as the press was concerned Obama was never supposed to lose. Nor was anyone supposed to point out that he had no real plan and that his proposals were completely unfocused and lacking in elementary details.

Naturally Obama's response was to deliver a high profile speech, long on the sort of vague rhetoric Hollywood has been featuring for a while now in movies and TV shows about terrorism, that amounts to a call for letting the same old criminal justice system handle it.

Of course Obama has only two crisis modes

A.) Give a speech that's full of high minded rhetoric and has no practical proposals to offer.

B.) Go on an international trip.

It's particularly embarrassing when former Vice President Cheney's numbers are actually going up in response to his challenges to Obama's terrorism policies. This after the left had spent 8 years caricaturing Cheney as a monster.

But Cheney is the only high profile Republican politician actually challenging Obama. Most of the heavy lifting until has been done by voices in the blogsphere and talk radio. The media has meanwhile been giving a lot of airtime to liberal Republicans to come out and endorse Obama's policies.

Giving Cheney airtime was meant to backfire on the Republican party, instead it backfired on the media and their Savior in Chief.

Obama has to know that he can't win over most Americans with a debate over Gitmo. Going soft on terrorism appeals to only a limited demographic, even within the Democratic party.

And Cheney will hopefully point the way for GOP Presidential hopefuls to begin speaking out a more loudly. Because Obama is weak on terrorism. And that weakness can be successfully exploited.

The average American expects results from the White House, but this is not a results oriented administration... at least not results that will benefit Americans.

"Seeking to defuse one of Republican's most potent arguments, the president added: "Let me begin by disposing of one argument as plainly as I can: we are not going to release anyone if it would endanger our national security, nor will we release detainees within the United States who endanger the American people."

An unreleased Pentagon report concludes that about one in seven of the 534 prisoners already transferred abroad from the detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, are engaged in terrorism or militant activity, according to administration officials.

The Pentagon promised in January that the latest report would be released soon, but Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said this week that the findings were still “under review.”

Two administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said the report was being held up by Defense Department employees fearful of upsetting the White House, at a time when even Congressional Democrats have begun to show misgivings over Mr. Obama’s plan to close Guantánamo.

The Pentagon said on Tuesday that 61 former detainees from its military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, appear to have returned to terrorism since their release from custody.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said 18 former detainees are confirmed as "returning to the fight" and 43 are suspected of having done in a report issued late in December by the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Morrell declined to provide details such as the identity of the former detainees, why and where they were released or what actions they have taken since leaving U.S. custody.

"This is acts of terrorism. It could be Iraq, Afghanistan, it could be acts of terrorism around the world," he told reporters.

Or it could be acts of terrorism right here in the US. Gitmo has served as a training course for many of the detainees, giving them constant access to Americans and to American culture. That will serve them well in any future operations.

Naturally the press is trying to spin this by claiming that the Gitmo terrorists are returning to terrorism, because of how "badly" they were treated in Gitmo. Which is a lot like claiming that a released pedophile only began molesting kids because of his time in prison.

-The emergence of a former Guantanamo Bay detainee as the deputy leader of Al Qaeda's Yemeni branch has underscored the potential complications in carrying out the executive order President Obama signed Thursday that the detention center be shut down within a year.

The militant, Said Ali al-Shihri, is suspected of involvement in a deadly bombing of the United States Embassy in Yemen's capital, Sana, in September. He was released to Saudi Arabia in 2007 and passed through a Saudi rehabilitation program for former jihadists before resurfacing with Al Qaeda in Yemen.

His status was announced in an Internet statement by the militant group and was confirmed by an American counterterrorism official.

So when Obama claims, "we are not going to release anyone if it would endanger our national security", he's lying through his shiny teeth and he knows it. Releasing terrorists means endangering our national security.

Two lawmakers of President Barack Obama's Democratic Party appealed Thursday to let Uighurs locked up at Guantanamo Bay move to the United States, saying they were victims of injustice.

US authorities four years ago cleared 17 imprisoned Uighurs -- members of a largely Muslim group in northwestern China who the State Department says face worsening persecution by Beijing.

But they are stuck at Guantanamo Bay due to fears that Beijing would torture them if they return. The United States has asked Germany, home to a large Uighur community, to take them in.

"We cannot expect the world to miraculously resolve this problem of our own making," Congressman Jim McGovern said.

"It is not enough, quite frankly, to ask that they be placed in Germany or in some other European country. I believe that we have an obligation to resettle at least some of the Uighurs here in the United States."

He and other lawmakers were addressing a world assembly of Uighurs, including dissident leader Rebiya Kadeer, who were meeting at the US Capitol in a bid to showcase their international support.

"Despite all of our words and our resolutions, we have let you down and we have put America's judicial system and our moral standing in the world at risk," said Bill Delahunt, like McGovern a Democratic congressman from Massachusetts.

"The Uighur people are not enemies of America. In fact, I know you admire our fundamental ideals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," he said....

Naturally. Maybe they can run for President too. Why not?

Meanwhile Netanyahu is revealing some of Obama's demands. One of them demanded that the UN flag fly over the Kotel, or the Western Wall, which is the holiest site in Judaism.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu vowed at the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva in Jerusalem Thursday night that the Israeli flag will continue to fly over the Western Wall (Kotel). The first prime minister in years to appear at the venerable yeshiva on Yom Yerushalayim (Jerusalem Day), he ignored U.S. President Barack Obama’s apparent trial balloon that he wants to see the United Nations flag fly over the Old City holy sites.

Jordan’s King Abdullah II said the president put forward the proposal during his visit to the White House last month.

Prime Minister Netanyahu declared, "The flag that flies over the Kotel is the Israeli flag... Our holy places, the Temple Mount -- will remain under Israeli sovereignty forever.”

In his short but enthusiastic speech at the yeshiva, where an Arab terrorist slaughtered eight young students slightly more than a year ago, Prime Minister Netanyahu repeated his “Undivided Jerusalem” message.

The packed study hall of the yeshiva interrupted Prime Minister Netanyahu’s short speech several times with applause. The first clap of hands was in response to the statement that Israel’s capital “never will be divided again.” Jerusalem Day marks the day in the Six Day War upon which the Israel Defense Forces liberated the eastern neighborhoods of Jerusalem from Jordanian rule.

It's a good beginning for Netanyahu in defying Obama.

In the blogsphere roundup, NeoCon Express looks at the consequences of Obama's election and the impact on Israel's ability to maintain its air force

The Obama administration has imposed obstacles on Israeli efforts to procure U.S.-origin fighter-jets. Over the last few months, the administration has rejected a series of Israeli requests regarding modifications of the F-35. They included Israeli electronic warfare systems and acquisition of U.S. software codes that would allow Israel to repair the aircraft's central computer. The U.S. refusal meant that the Israel Air Force would be forced to send the F-35 to the United States for any repairs, a process that could take months.

The sources said the State Department has been delaying Israeli requests for pre-export licenses required for an examination of the new generation F-15. The sources said the administration has not approved the new F-15 for the Foreign Military Sales program. They said this could prevent Israel from using U.S. military aid to purchase the aircraft from Boeing. "This is a legal issue," a source said. "The F-15SE might not qualify for FMS."

…They say people are coming together -- but in reality, they are growing apart. And that isn’t because an economic depression suddenly burst forth, and swine flu to boot. [It] began on September 11, 2001. At first, anger and horror was provoked by the terrorists who knocked down the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and by their accomplices in London, Madrid and other cities, and by the shahids, suicide bombers who blew themselves up at public spaces like discotheques and wedding parties, whose families were rewarded $25,000 each by Saddam Hussein.

Later, Bush was blamed for everything, and as always, the Jews -- that is, Israel… So it is about Israel and the Jews that I will speak... At one time, the Nobel Peace Prize was the highest moral award of our civilization. But after December 1994, when Yasser Arafat became one of the three new laureates, its ethical value was undermined. I haven’t always greeted each selection of the Nobel Committee of the Norwegian Storting with joy, but that one shocked me. And to this day, I cannot understand and accept the fact that Andrei Sakharov and Yasir Arafat, now posthumously, share membership in the club of Nobel laureates.

In many of Sakharov’s publications… [he] wrote and spoke about Israel. I have a collection of citations of his writing on this topic. If it were published in Norway, then many Norwegians would be surprised at how sharply their contemporary view of Israel differs from the view of Sakharov. Here are several citations from Sakharov: …

“All wars that Israel has waged have been just, forced upon it by the irresponsibility of Arab leaders.” “With all the money that has been invested in the problem of Palestinians, it would have been possible long ago to resettle them and provide them with good lives in Arab countries.”

But of course the organized human rights activists who draw six figure salaries for waging lawfare on behalf of detained Al Queda terrorists, have no interest in what she has to say.

Palestine and Kosovo must be seen in the context of the third invasion of Islam into Europe. The first invasion in the 8th century had taken Europe by assault from the southwest, colonized the Iberian Peninsula and attempted to take over Gallic France until it was arrested by Charles Martel in 732. The Spanish reconquista which took centuries to reclaim that land, was not completed before the end of the 15th century, at the very same time that the second invasion of the Ottomans, this time from the south-east, swept through the Balkans and eventually made headway to the gates of Vienna. But that invasion, too, was finally repulsed. The retrieval of the lands once ruled by Islam (Andalusia, Palestine, the Balkans and Kashmir) is a matter of the highest priority from the Islamic point of view.

Attacking India or the European Union by Islam outright is too risky. Therefore attention is centered on the easier targets of Palestine and the Balkans, with Andalusia, Sicily and Kashmir in the second stage. For the rest of Europe a new tactic of soft invasion, by immigration and demographic explosion, has already yielded impressive results: within one generation, 30 million Muslims have taken a foothold in Europe.

And the invasion has only begun. Everything happening in Europe now is only the beachhead. Israel provides a good show of what the next phase will look like, something we're seeing only glimpses of in France now.

1 comments:

The Palestinians have demonstrated that they are incapable of forming a viable state which can be at peace with Israel. I have come to the conclusion that for peace to come to the middle east the idea of a Palestinian state should be abandoned.

The borders of Israel should be expanded to include all of Palestine.

Palestinians should be offered diminishing financial incentives in the form of annuities to relocate elsewhere. The annuity would cease to be paid if the Palestinian returned. Those who refuse the financial incentives should be forcibly removed. Returning without permission would be punishable by death.